Yesterday I protested in a novel way, I think nobody would have done and my friends (even myself) has different opinions and responses about it. Yesterday I managed to wake up by 7 O’clock [ A rare thing 🙂 ] and had a discussion with Prakash Peter on the way to PG mess about conducting a demo of phoenix in our Institution with Physics Department [Prakash Peter is lab assistant in Physics lab and he came to meet KSK to arrange for some programme for NSS. Previously we had gone to old age home together.] Read the rest of this entry »

03.04.05

Yesterday we had a very interesting and important talk by Dr. K.P. Aravindan of Calicut Medical College who is an activist of kssp. He talked about various issues regarding the proposed patent law brought out as an ordinance. He started with the historical developments in the filed and talked about the the Paris Convention and the GATTS (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the TRIPS (Trade related Intellectual Property rights) …. Only the elites of this country benefit from Globalisation and we, lucky to be in the elite, should rebel against it and make the benefits available to the masses of this country. Read the rest of this entry »

03.03.05

Today I presented a seminar in Economics. Our group [Praveens — me, Praveen Kumar, Praveen Kumar VR and Praveen sebastian] got the topic ‘Free Trade Vs Protection’. I was supposed to take it on last Friday but I got it postponed to taday [It was an adjustment with Dhanya mam and Praveen Kumar to attend the renaissance 2005 at GECTRead my blog entry]. Yesterday was completely blank except the preparation for the seminar [I was browsing till 5 in the morning day before that — after a break of a week — and woke up by 12 noon (I missed Dilpu‘s Seminar in Industrial Drives too). After ‘brunch’ I was caught by the Gnome Mines — I used to complete the large board with 99 mines regularly, when I feel like relaxing — in fact you get tensed when you can’t complete it — I had to wait till 6 O’clock to complete one board — I was too disturbed, not able to concentrate — also it needs luck too lost many times in the nineties too, even 98 !]. I read about my topic share ‘Arguments in favour of protection’. I refered books by Dewet and Samuelson. Then I went to meet Tojin with a goal to discuss the topic, but we discussed many things from economics, environment, pollution, automobiles, department, college …. Shanker and Arun MS was also there. In the afternoon we saw a fierce debate between Karthik and Arun Titto on Motherjane Rock band, they performed at Ragam 2005. Tojin, me and VIP were spectators. It was very interesting to watch them fighting. Both trying to say their arguments are strong. [It was triggered when Titto told Motherjane is a local band and it cannot be compared with any rock band. Karthik asserted that they are a good band and they showed their mettle in the great Indian rock concert by winning it and their numbers are played in 14 radio stations in the US ] Read the rest of this entry »

02.19.05

Rgam 2005 ends today — our last Ragam as students of NITC [I hope it will be :-)]. This has been my fourth Ragam. The memories [or was it a nightmare ?] of the first Ragam is still there [and it’ll be there whenever I hear the word Ragam]. A foolish act, which could have resulted in my arrest and first police case [Hey I’m serious]. The incident goes like this >>

One guy with a black T-shirt comes to us [Robin and Vineeth Menon were also with me]. He asks for my ID card [I dunno why he chose me — I guess only I had the Ragam T-shirt]. He said his friend is waiting outside and since he don’t have a pass he needs an ID to get his friend inside. I was confused and didn’t thought of the consequences but wouldn’t have given, had my friends didn’t give me the confidence [or whatever you call it]. Read the rest of this entry »

02.10.05

Today we [NSS family at NIT C] had our cultural programme Garland. It is a platform to showcase the various unique cultural and art forms of different parts of our country. We are very lucky to be in this college where we can mingle with persons from every part of India and get a feeling of the ‘Unity in diversity’ — the principle that bonds all of us together. Read the rest of this entry »

02.05.05

The main CC was down yester day because the UPS got burned, and it was up only today morning. Well yesterday I saw two movies ‘The Italian Job’ and ‘Kadal’. The first one was a great thriller and a ‘must-watch’ and the other is a movie which portrait reality [It is a Tamil movie], and it is very different and very disturbing to say the least. The Italian Job has all the ingradients to keep you hooked to the seat.
Yesterday night Arun Titto called me and asked me to try something to play the vcd which didn’t open in Windows XP. I simply tried mplayer vcd://1 and it played smoothly. Titto was amazed and he is now a fan of the GNU/Linux box [powered by the first ever distro — the powerful slackware]. Now about the movie, it is a love story [a normal love story] but pictured in a very different way [Infact I won’t recommend anyone to see it — After all you see a movie to relax, if you’re not this type then go and watch it]. The story is very much slow paced and test your patience. We, me, Titto and Jayadev had to try hard not to leave before it ended.
Then I’ve completed a major chink of the fair record with the help of xmms and mplayer in xavier’s computer running slackware [It was my favorite at that time and I installed it on 4 of my friends computer and I had to configure every part of the system to get it working — I strongly recommend this to everyone who really want to learn the hacker’s way [It is called ahckers distro] you have to configure sound, graphics card, run level ….. [and without any wizards help — just the command line] the partition to be done using cfdisk [or fdisk for more challenging] then alsaconfig, X configuration [Infact I got a great chance to learn what happens under the hood and really make it the way I wanted [they give the gnome, kde …. as is given by the developers — unlike redhat or suse ppl who configure everything for you]

01.14.05

It was a great experience to be a teacher when the students are teachers !!!! We became teachers and the teachers of REC GVHSS became our students. We started out training programme by NSS today with a positive note. Both enjoyed it and we are looking forward to the next class. It will have to be after the sessionals. First one of them introdused us to the others. Today Jas (Jithu from s4 CSE, others with me were Bipin and Sree Kumar, both from s4, the former being compsci and the latter ece) started withe the basics of computers from Von Neumann model. We were a bit anxious as to how teachers might feel about the technical stuff we are gonna present. At some points of the class we were worried about the reaction from teachers. All our worries (and theirs 🙂 were over when I instructed Jas to show how to login. Then we just helped them with the usage, whatever they asked we just helped them do. Some wanted to customise the desktop, some wanted to know how to search for more material on eye in the net, some others wanted to know how to open cds and burn cds, and on and on ….

But I was not satified then, I was looking for GNU stuff. I stopped grub from booting directly to window$ 98 and booted to Redhat GNU/Linux 9 with kernel 2.4. But it wasn’t easy as no one ever used it and they didn’t knew the password. But it was a simple thingfor me, I just rebooted to the single user mode and removed the root password !!! and added a guest user with no password. Also I changed the timout from 10 second to a minute before booting. Now I’ve to help them shed their fear about GNU/linux. Some of the teachers are interested in GNU/Linux others don’t care what it is. We are gonna prepare the slides in Open Office and we’ll stress on GNU/Linux [there is no point in recruiting for M$]. Juniors were impressed and now they’ll be trying it on their friends’ comps 🙂 [the single user thing]. So every hackers out there, this is a big and effective chance for us to spread the word of GNU to the masses,

>>>>>>> GO TO SCHOOLS !!! >>>>>>

[Many a teacher complaint that nobody teach them GNU/Linux. Rajagopaln sir briefed the other day about a plan to help teachers in schools]

After the session, which we started by 4 and ended by 6.30. We had tea in canteen and discussed the general situation and now we have to prepare according to their feedbacks. It was a really a wonderfull experience.

I have not buncked any hour today or yesterday. Infact Thursday and Friday I have full attendence. It seems it takes three days more for me to finish the weekend :-). Also today we send the NSS programme reports and our contribution towards Prime Minister’s relief fund and mainly camp report. Oh! I got another pack of 10 ubuntu today cds [It is free in every meaning, free as in freedom as well as free as in free lunch -just order your cds at their site (this is my second pack, I already got 20 cds at home :-)]. then we have a 3 hour Charlie Chaplin movie show as part of ‘Mental Relaxation’. It is going on, but I didn’t go [As I felt relaxed after a nice sssion with GVHSS teachers]. Now I feel that, after all, ‘all those hours spent in cc is not that waste’, someone is gaining from my loss [whatever you gain something else you lose as someone said].

It has been very long and I guess your boredom is over. Thanks for reading this.

01.06.05

Today I woke by around 10 and attented ANN hour (Infact me and ksp[Kiran S Pillai] was first to reach the class, we used to keep same timings for class and sleep 🙂 Now he has two bunks more than me 😉 he is at 23 and I’m just behind him by 21 but VR is way ahead with 34, but he was out of station for some days me and KSP were here all the days and manged this figure.

After the class me and KSK[Kiren SK] went to meet Jaikumar sir to discuss NSS programmes. He went to meet project guide and I went with Shankar, Tojin and MS to meet Suresh Kumar Sir [He is the best teacher our department has got and arguably one of the best in our college or even absolutely, and I have manged to write his two subjects two times ;-)], our project guide. Diplu could not come because of a cycle accedent. He fell down from a cycle and it’s not serious but manged with some three or four wounds. We started with discussion of our project and we moved to various other topics. We discussed about books and softwares. He told he was convinced about the need of Free software and its importance. He was in doubt about the violation of law made every day. He pointed out the software piracy and its implications. We are trying hard to bring him to the Free Software community. He pledged his support for our efforts to spread the message of Software Freedom.
He discussed about the book reviews and his plan to write a book.

Then I mailed some Firefox tips to some of the free software groups. We are moving ahead with our palns for FOSS conference on Jan 29. Today we’ve Birthady treats of Karthik and Titto.

01.02.05

Yesterday (or rather today) I woke up at 9 (early for a holiday, even week days I won’t be up by 9!). I gave YOPER and OpenCd to the canteen guy so that Dr. Felix could have it when he pass by Canteen. We have been exchanging cds for some time (It started with ubuntu), he gave me Suse 9.2 and I gave him Fedora 3, Mandrake 10.1, Novell Linux 9, Kalango 3.0 … Read the rest of this entry »